Steel Hunters, the Mech Battle Game From the People Behind World of Tanks, Is the Latest Live Service Casualty

The unrecorded work bloodbath continues — this clip the casualty is Steel Hunters, the mech shooter crippled from the radical down World of Tanks.

Steel Hunters launched connected April 2 successful aboriginal entree signifier connected Steam. Some had hoped for Titanfall vibes from this free-to-play, PvPvE shooter, but it fell wholly flat. And conscionable 3 months later, developer Wargaming has announced plans to sunset the game.

In a station addressing Steel Hunter’s community, Wargaming said the game’s servers volition unrecorded connected for different 3 months earlier the crippled goes acheronian permanently from October 8.

“Today we stock hard news: we've made the determination to sunset Steel Hunters,” Wargaming’s connection began. “You've fixed america truthful overmuch passionateness and enactment but unluckily we've travel to the decision that continuing improvement is not sustainable. We cognize this isn't the quality anyone wanted to perceive and we genuinely stock successful your disappointment.”

So what went wrong? Amid the difficulties truthful galore unrecorded work games person endured successful caller times, Steel Hunters failed to seizure an audience. It launched connected Steam with a highest of 4,479 concurrent players and a ‘mixed’ idiosyncratic reappraisal rating, and it was downhill from there. At the clip of this article’s publication, the 24-hour highest was 97, with conscionable 52 concurrent players — that’s devastating for immoderate free-to-play game.

The apical idiosyncratic reappraisal connected Steam, from a subordinate with implicit 300 hours connected Steel Hunters including its assorted pre-launch forms, lamented the imaginable of the game, and praised its mech plan and maps. However, they critisized Wargaming's deficiency of a roadmap, dilatory gait of updates, and assorted bugs.

"Early entree should person ne'er happened," they said. "We should person ne'er near beta. Time and clip again the players person been vocal astir changes oregon fixes that were needed and person travel to the array with precise adjuvant solutions lone to beryllium met with 'we are moving forward' lone to past respond with 'why did it spell south?'"

Live work video games are enduring a pugnacious clip close now, with a fig of titles falling by the wayside oregon uncovering themselves canceled earlier launch. Sony’s Concord is possibly the highest-profile illustration of that, a PlayStation catastrophe that outgo the gaming concern hundreds of millions of dollars. But lone past week, Microsoft canceled an unannounced MMORPG from the developer of The Elder Scrolls Online, resulting successful hundreds of layoffs.

Wesley is Director, News astatine IGN. Find him connected Twitter astatine @wyp100. You tin scope Wesley astatine [email protected] oregon confidentially astatine [email protected].